The Daily Scoop Podcast

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday night tasking the Pentagon to build a plan for a multilayered missile defense system underpinned by both space-based sensors and interceptors. Under the directive, titled “Iron Dome for America,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is required to develop “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements and an implementation plan” to address emerging aerial threats against the U.S. homeland. The strategy, due to the president in the next 60 days, must focus on defense against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other aerial platforms. An artificial intelligence advisory panel created during the first Trump administration is delivering the president a list of 10 actionable AI priorities to pursue as he begins his second term. The National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, established under section 5104 of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020, voted Tuesday in favor of a 10-priority draft document of “timely AI policy issues and proposed solutions.” The recommendations laid out in that document, NAIAC said, should “provide an opportunity for the administration to achieve its goals to advance the United States’ continued AI leadership and competitiveness.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

A lawsuit filed in federal court Monday alleges that the Office of Personnel Management set up an on-premise server to conduct last week’s mass email blast to federal employees and store information it received in response without doing a privacy impact assessment on the system as required by law. Filed by two anonymous federal employees in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the class-action lawsuit calls for OPM to stop the use of the system until the agency can show that it’s lawfully conducted a privacy assessment. The two employees accuse OPM officials of deploying the new server — which is said to be “retaining information about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch” or potentially doing so through systems linked to it — in a “rapid” manner without building proper security measures into it or assessing the privacy impacts as required by the E-Government Act of 2002. The Trump administration said it is offering “deferred resignation” options to federal employees who agree to leave their positions within seven business days, the latest in a series of actions aimed at slashing the government’s workforce. In an email that the Office of Personnel Management said was sent to federal employees Tuesday, the White House presented government workers with a “deferred resignation offer.” Federal workers who accept that offer by Feb. 6 “will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the message posted on OPM’s website said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Defense houses one of — if not the biggest — workforces in the world. It is a Fortune 1 company, if you think about it that way. And managing a workforce that large and complex doesn’t come easy. However, the department believes that modern technology can play a role in making workforce management more effective. To discuss that, Wyatt Kash recently spoke with Mark Gorak, principal Director for resources & analysis in the office of the DOD CIO, about the digital tools and resource the department is leaning on to modernize it workforce management and the challenges such a large enterprise faces in managing its workforce. The Trump administration has made its pick for federal CIO, FedScoop has learned. Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Greg Barbaccia has been hired for the federal CIO role within the Office of Management and Budget. He replaces Clare Martorana, who served in the role for nearly the entirety of the Biden administration. In the short time the role has been vacant since Martorana stepped down Jan. 20, Deputy Federal CIO Drew Myklegard has filled it in an acting capacity. Barbaccia comes to the role with a background of mostly private-sector experience, though he started his career in the U.S. Army, according to a public bio. He then went on to build a resume as a technology leader at Palantir, where he spent a decade in roles including head of intelligence and investigations; blockchain company Elementus; and San Francisco-based credit underwriting technology company Theorem, where he was most recently CISO before taking the federal CIO role. OpenAI has announced a new more tailored version of ChatGPT called ChatGPT Gov, a service that the company said is meant to accelerate government use of the tool for non-public sensitive data. In an announcement Tuesday, the company said that ChatGPT Gov, which can run in the Microsoft Azure commercial cloud or Azure Government cloud, will give federal agencies increased ability to use OpenAI frontier models. The product is also supposed to make it easier for agencies to follow certain cybersecurity and compliance requirements, while exploring potential applications of the technology, the announcement said. Through ChatGPT Gov, federal agencies can use GPT-4o, along with a series of other OpenAI tools, and build custom search and chat systems developed by agencies. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The FedRAMP Emerging Technology Prioritization Framework, which was established last year to accelerate the use of systems like artificial intelligence in the federal cloud, has been eliminated as part of President Donald Trump’s rescission of the Biden administration’s AI executive order. A person with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed the program no longer existed. The Emerging Technology Prioritization Framework, which recently switched to a rolling application process, aimed to allow cloud service providers to request prioritization of cloud services associated with emerging technology in the FedRAMP authorization process. The framework’s final draft was issued last summer, requiring interested cloud providers to apply for prioritization by the end of August 2024. The General Services Administration, which operates the FedRAMP program, said initial determinations would be announced the following month. Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, was confirmed as the next secretary of defense after Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate Friday night. Senators voted 50-50 before Vance had to be called in to tip the balance. Hegseth will take the helm at the Defense Department as the DOD gears up for potential wars against high-tech adversaries such as China. During his confirmation process, Hegseth pledged that as defense secretary he would prioritize investments in AI, drones and counter-drone systems, among other technologies that he considers key to military modernization. Soon after his confirmation, Hegseth issued a message to the military on Saturday that expressed his intent to quickly field emerging capabilities to deter China and others. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday mandates a review of agency activities stemming from the Biden administration’s now-revoked EO on artificial intelligence and calls for the creation of a new plan of action. The brief order establishes that it is the policy of the U.S. “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” It sets in motion steps for the new administration as it looks to craft its own approach to the growing technology. President Joe Biden’s order (EO 14110), which was among the first items Trump revoked after returning to the White House, had been focused on using the technology while also managing its safety and security risks. But Trump and Republicans took issue with it, saying it would hinder AI development. The Republican party platform called it “dangerous.” Defense leaders are weighing their options to deploy various types of military drones on the U.S.-Mexico border for information-collecting and surveillance operations in support of the Trump administration’s move to rapidly expand troop presence there, a senior military official told reporters Wednesday. “A lot of the ground units now have tactical [unmanned aerial systems, or UAS] that they might bring in,” the official said during an off-camera briefing at the Pentagon. On the condition of anonymity, they and another top defense official took questions from the media regarding the Defense Department’s first official statement about how its components plan to rapidly respond to President Donald Trump’s executive mandates to tighten security at America’s southern border with the support of the U.S. military.

The Office of Personnel Management has created a new email account meant to collect reports of suspected diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, one of a series of moves the Trump administration has taken to slash DEI efforts across the federal workforce. According to a Jan. 21 memo available online, OPM directed agencies — which are now engaged in the process of shutting down diversity initiatives — to collect reports of any efforts to disguise such initiatives. The memo states that the administration is aware of efforts by some in government to disguise DEI programs by using coded or imprecise language, calling for anyone aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEI or similar ideologies to report all “facts and circumstances” to the email account DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days. Failure to report such activities could result in “adverse consequences,” the memo notes. The White House sent Michael Kratsios’s nomination to direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to the Senate on Wednesday, formally beginning his confirmation process. Kratsios was chief technology officer during the first Trump administration and was most recently managing director at Scale AI, a technology company and defense contractor focused on AI model training data. Sending his nomination to the Senate officially starts the confirmation process and puts him among the first of Trump’s selections officially transmitted to the chamber. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

President Donald Trump on Monday officially shut down the Customs and Border Protection-run app designed to help schedule appointments for people seeking eligibility for asylum, closing off a pathway for migrants at the Southern border hoping to enter the United States. Supporters of the CBP One app had said that the system made the jobs of border agents easier, despite technical difficulties and data privacy questions raised by critics of the platform. It’s estimated that around a million people used the app to enter the country. The app shutdown came amid a series of other executive orders focused on immigration. Before the election, Trump frequently criticized the app, saying that it was being used for “smuggling” migrants. The Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security unveiled a list of artificial intelligence uses that are prohibited for agency missions as part of a new directive quietly introduced last week. The directive, which is DHS’s latest effort to create a guiding policy for the use and acquisition of AI, also sets governance requirements for how the department and its components should approach the technology — including how it should buy, test and operate it, and report any incidents involving its use. While DHS has briefly addressed in previous policy that it’s prohibited for department personnel to use AI for discriminatory purposes, the latest policy expands upon and adds to that, more thoroughly detailing uses of AI and associated data that are forbidden. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Ross Nodurft, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation and former cybersecurity head, shares tech priorities for the Trump administration. He discusses how the new administration's tech approach could drive efficiency in federal operations. Rob Carey, president of Cloudera Government Solutions, emphasizes the importance of data trustworthiness for AI in government. The conversation dives into challenges with data silos, the need for modern architecture, and strategic AI implementation to enhance operational efficiency and collaboration.

Troy Meink, a senior leader at the National Reconnaissance Office, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to serve as secretary of the Air Force. The former and future commander-in-chief announced his pick Thursday on Truth Social. As the civilian head of the Department of the Air Force — which also includes the Space Force — Meink would be responsible for leading the service during a period of wide-ranging modernization. If confirmed by the Senate, he’d be expected to play a key role in deciding the future of the Next-Generation Air Dominance program. The department is also pursuing Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the B-21 stealth bomber, a Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, AI capabilities, modernized cyber and IT tools, and the DAF Battle Network, among other technologies. Meink has been serving as principal deputy director of NRO, a position he was appointed to during the first Trump administration in 2020. In that role, he was tasked with “overall day-to-day management of the NRO, with decision responsibility as delegated by the Director.” Federal agencies with top-secret workloads can now use OpenAI’s GPT-4o through Microsoft’s Azure for U.S. Government Top Secret cloud. Microsoft announced Thursday it received authorization for 26 additional products in its top-secret cloud environment, meeting Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503 standards and allowing agencies — particularly those in the intelligence community and Defense Department — to use them for the government’s most classified information. Those added tools include Azure OpenAI Service — which provides Azure customers access to OpenAI’s generative AI large language models — and Azure Machine Learning, among others. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Biden administration released anticipated guidance Wednesday for federal agencies to implement the OPEN Government Data Act and reupped the Chief Data Officers Council after it lapsed last month, completing two key actions for federal data pol icy. Under the Office of Management and Budget memo (M-25-05), commonly known as “Phase II” guidance, agencies have long-awaited marching orders on how to create and maintain comprehensive data inventories and make their data open by default. That includes requirements to create a data inventory that is interoperable with the Federal Data Catalog, conform to the metadata schema approved by the White House, and publish that inventory on the agency’s website. The memo reestablishing the CDO Council (M-25-06), meanwhile, gives the panel the ability to start exactly how it left off when its authorization lapsed Dec. 15 with the same membership and leadership. That will be important for carrying out the work under the Phase II guidance as the CDO Council is partly responsible for one of the first actions. That cybersecurity executive order we mentioned earlier in the week is officially here. President Biden on Thursday issued the EO on Strengthening and Promoting Innovation in the Nation’s Cybersecurity, ordering additional actions to improve the nation’s cybersecurity, focusing on defending digital infrastructure, securing the services and capabilities most vital to the digital domain, and building capability to address key threats, including those from the People’s Republic of China. The order constitutes one big last stab at cybersecurity in the Biden administration’s 11th hour and is a follow-up to an order published in the first year of his presidency. It gives agencies 53 deadlines, stretching in length from 30 days to three years. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.